A2 Media Studies Evaluation

Ashley Sangu

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• While researching the genre conventions for a horror film I found that the majority of horror genre films had a dark background to the setting so they were filmed at night and that they often were also filmed in a house which was proved by modern day horror films such as Paranormal Activty and the short horror film that I had chosen to analyse, Mannequin. In order to make the short film more realistic as a group we decided to include the conventions of the film developing into a darker setting when the negatives start to occur, however we felt that we didn't want to conform to the convention of the film being set in a house location therefore we felt that we wanted to shoot the film in a the setting of the woods which we felt would create a more tense atomsphere than compared to a house or a school becasue the woods are more open therefore it gives the sense of anything can happen at any time to the audience as the woods are open but a house is closed off.. Another convention we deviated from was that all horror films should be serious and we wanted to follow a comedy convention to act in relation to the tense scenes of a horror film therefore this convention was challenged in the form of the friendship of two main characters of the film Danny and Timmy in which they are the comedians. I think the comedy aspect of the film was needed becasue it keeps the audience hooked, it gives them something to listen to and keeps them stimulated enough for when the tense/scary scenes occur, therefore I felt this was a succes because the audience were hooked on the film during our premier night, and the comedy aspects just gave them something more besides the sense of fear which was portrayed during the tense/scary scenes. We also challenged the general convention of having tense music during a scene, however we challenged this by letting the shots frighten the audience, also the order of events, e/g/ the plot of the film was something did we did not choose to challenge as we thought the normal order of events for a horror film worked quite well so we stuck to that layout.

• Conventions for the Poster that I conformed to are that a poster for a horror film should have a dark setting, such as a black background becasue black represents darkness, danger, and also a sense not knowing what is going to happen next, a mystical effect which is something that I wanted to use. I chose to use a picture of a woods in the background of my poster, also on the horror film poster I wanted to challenge conventions such as using the colour red, as I didn't use red and I wanted to contrast the darkness on the poster so I opted to use white on the text which was on the poster. Also another convention that i challenged was the name of the film being in the top 1/4 of the page, but I chose to have it near the bottom half of the page as it seemed to allow for the flow of the forest to not be interupted and it suited better in the bottom position. The font was a convention I wanted to stick to in comparison to other horror film posters, and this was a white font colour and the font size for the title had to bigger than the other text on the poster as you are promoting the film. Another convention that was evident throughout my research on horror film posters was a film certificate rating being on either the left or the right side on the bottom of the page, so on my film poster I had chose to put it on the right hand side as without it, the poster didn't seem realistic as it without the 15 cetificate sign there wasn't much else to enchance the reailty of the poster. Another convention I decided to follow was the names of the actors on the bottom of the film and then a tagline right at the bottom of the film, I followed this convention as it was the essense of a film poster because the rest of my film poster research contained features such as these which made them seem real in my eyes. My film review follows the convention of having at least 2 images which relate to the film and this is what was evident when I was conducting my research. My film review also challenges some conventions as to having on ly 3 text boxes for the actual review which are aligned together then there is one for the facts of the film which is quite rare as many other film reviews incorparate the film facts into the main body of the review. Another convention that I have challenged is the placement of the title of the film review as it is in the middle but on many other different examples of film reviews the title of the film review tends to be at the top, I wanted to challenge this convention as the title at the top seemed boring and too normal, however my horror film isn't normal therefore this creates the sense of abnormality. Another convention that my film review has conformed to is the 'verdict' box in the report as most of the film reviews that I have researched had this and also had a rating which is something I have also incorporated.

• In the posters above (Entrada on the left, Paranormal Activity on the right) you can see that there are some genre conventions that both posters share such as the relevant picture being in the middle, and the picture being from a scene of the film, also the titles of the films are in the bottom 1/4 of the page. The colour schemes are much the same too, showcasing darkness showing that they are both horror films. However there are also many differences such as the fact that on my pster there isn't much writing on it which is good as it doesn't give much of the film away and there is no cerficate of viewing on the Paranormal Activity poster which I felt was needed to make the poster look more realistic.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

• For the ancillary task and more specifically the poster I decided to make sure that it had a link back to the film and that it was relevant to the genre of the film which was horror. In order to link the poster back to the film I had decided to use a screenshot from a scene in the film therefore the poster is able to provide some information on the characters of the film. Also to make the poster relevant to the film I had also decided to use the same dark colours such as black which helps relate to the film as it shows that it is of a horror genre, if I was to use the colour pink it wouldn't create that sense of horro when looking at the poster becasue pink represents happy and black repesents uncertaincy which is involved in the genre conventions of a horror film. Also to help distinguish that the poster was related to the film, I had decided to use a picture of the woods in as the background picture for my poster as this is relevant because the setting of the short film was the woods. The certain tone throughout the start of the film was humour therefore when it came to writing my film review I had decided to use a humourous tone when discussing the actors and the way that they had acted becasue the acting many had found quite funny especially of the two characters Danny and Timmy and I know this from my audience feedback which was conducted after the showing of our short film, as many of my peers and teachers commented on how they found certain scenes quite funny and the weren't exactly being nice in this review which shows that the feedback has a level of genuiness, so in order to make the link between the film and the film review I had to use a tone of humour when writing the review.

• Also between the main product the film, and the ancillary tasks, the poster and the film review I decided to share the same colour scheme throught the film so I encorporate black and white into the poster and film review to create the feeling of darkness which is in the film and the white is used to help show that they are both from the same background. Also to link the poster and thefilm review back to the film I used screenshots from the film as the main pictures on the film poster and the film review so the audience are able to tell that the review is for a film called 'Entrada' and it allows them to see something from a scene which would further relate it back to the film. Also the premiere night helped bring the poster in to help gather people asking about the film and helped promote the event also the poster helped the audience to see a sneak peak of what was in store for them before the film was premiered.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• The research that I initially took was through conduting a survey on survey monkey and this research helped me to understand what age group would generally watch horror films and these were mainly 15-20 year olds. This research also helped to show me what genre conventions to follow for a horror film and helped show what people wanted out a horror film as in the survey I asked a question such as 'What do you expect from a horror film?' and the respondents responded with answers such as the film having a good storyline and to have a sense of fear, also they expected it to have dramatic music in the leading upto a tense scene and this helped me when thinking about the genre conventions I was going to use in the film and how to attract this target audience using the film and both the poster and the film review. Also I had learnt that form my audience feedback that most people were attracted to a film by the poster which meant that it was a good idea to pick the poster for one of the ancillary tasks. The feedback from the premier night was good which ensured that what I learnt from the feedback from the survey was correct and that it did entice the demographic of 15-20 year olds as they felt scared in some parts of the film and that we conformed to some of their expectations as many of the audience enjoyed the storyline and the plot. (To help answer this question I will be screenshotting feedback from other people and from my survey)

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

• First of all during the planning stages I used mainly Microsoft Office and in particular Word and Powerpoint to display the research that I had conducted, I used this is software as it was basic to use and therefore was less strressful and this allowed me to get the planning stages done quicker than I would have if I was using another program such as note pad. Microsoft Office was brilliant to use as it allowed me to structure a good layout which enabled me to easily structure words alongside images which I had done when conducting research for analysing Genre Conventions. I also chose Microsoft Word and powerpoint as it was less hassle to upload the document to the blog by using a website called scribd, this was also quick and It allowed myself to navigate around the website with not miuch hassle and it was also great to use as I was able to embed the work on to my blog rather than putting up a, website link to the work, the work was avaliable to see on my blog. To conduct the construction of the actual products such as the Poster I chose to use Photoshop as I felt connfident using Photoshop as I had previosuly used it during the AS media module. The only issues with using photoshop for the creation of my poster was that it was quite fiddly as it didn't allow for any imperfections so it kept rearanging images and text where I didn't want them to be placed, so I overcame this issue by using merging the layers together so it would be easier to place two things in one place rather than it not placing properly. To edit the final version of the film product me and my team mates from my group decided it would be best to use premiere pro to edit the film as it wasn't as basic as iMovie which didn't feature many features to edit the film with such as not allowing to use your own music, you had to selceted from a arrange of pre-loaded sounds/music.

• Also premiere pro helped create the special features we wanted in the film to use and this was paticularly the scene where one of the characters Danny was lifted up by the Ghost and by suing premiere pro it allowed for the scene to look realsitic. The only downsides to using premiere pro was that it was quite difficult to use as it wasn't easy to naviagte around becasue the software was new to me so I decided to look at some tutorials on Youtube, however we had someone on our team that was familiar with the program. To make my film review I initially started to develop it on photoshop which was good as I was already familiar with photoshop and I knew how to use it but however while it allowed me to edit the pictures with ease it did not allow for me to enable gridlines easily therefore it was harder to get the layout I desired which was having 3 word boxes and then an 'film facts' area on to the right of all the handwriting, so instead of using photoshop I opted to use Indesign which allowed for an easier layout to be designed using text boxes and ruler grid lines therefore allowing me to stick to the structure I had planned to use allowing for a greater finshed product at the end which has allowed the film review to look more realistic beforehand and therefore it looks more like a professional magazine rather than an amature attempt. Also with the media technologies I found it overall easier to create at A2 level than AS level and this is becasue the computers at my sixth form were upgraded which meant they ran faster and now had the capability to handle programs such as photoshop and indesign so it was a better experience than the AS experience as we were not at a disadvantage comapred to other centers.